Sunday, September 2, 2012

Leadership Responsibilities - Self-Assessment

In self
assessing my own strengths and weakness against the leadership responsibilities
in the Marzano reading, I found that I do some things very well and have other
responsibility areas to work on. Some of the definitions of the various responsibility
areas differed from my own definitions, which provide a deeper opportunity for
reflection in these areas. The correlation with student achievement was also an
interesting perspective to explore and provided insight in how I define my role
within the school. This perspective also helped me explore how I can have a greater impact on student achievement
though the intentional development of these leadership responsibilities.

The
improvement areas, as highlighted in the self-assessment were “change agent”,
“monitor/evaluate”, “order”, “flexibility”, “visibility”, “situational
awareness”, and “discipline”. Some of these areas I could have predicted before
taking the self-assessment. For example, I know that I need to work on being
more visible during the school day. I easily get caught up in the barrage of
emails I get on a daily basis, and days seem to slip by while I work in my
office on various projects. As Marzano, describes, interactions with students,
teachers and parents throughout the school day are extremely valuable in conveying
a message of engagement and involvement in the school. Much of my communication
with these groups is electronic. My goal for this school year is to be much
more visable in the hallways, classroom and school events. This will naturally
lead to informal data gathering to inform my work.

The
leadership responsibility definition of flexibility was different than my
initial definition. I have always thought of myself as a flexible school
administrator. I adapt my work to the meet the needs various stakeholders and I
allow my perspective to change with additional information. According to
Marzano (2005) flexibility is described as “the extend to which leaders adapt
their leadership behavior to the needs of the current situation and are
comfortable with dissent” (Chapter 4, Section 7, para 1). This comfort with
dissent is a weakness of mine, therefore I found the responsibility of
flexibility to be an area of improvement. Flexibility had a higher correlation
to student achievement (.28) than other areas, so I do realize the importance
of the this leadership responsibility and will work on improving this area
of my work.

My
strength areas included the areas of “outreach” and “culture among others. Both
of these areas had higher correlations to student achievement, .27 and .25
respectively. Outreach, as defined by Marzano, includes the extent to with an
administrator advocates for the school, to a variety of individuals and groups.
As the director of technology, a large part of my role is advocating for funds
for technology to enhance and differentiate student learning. This can be
challenging, but also a very rewarding component of my job.

The component of flexibility I stuggle with, is being comfortable with dissent. As a 2nd year administrator I think this all comes down to confidence in my knowledge and decision-making that will come with time.